How much was lost in the Reaper Finance hack?

The Reaper Finance hack resulted in $31K in losses on December 07, 2020.

What attack technique was used in the Reaper Finance exploit?

The Reaper Finance exploit utilized Rugpull. Understanding this attack vector is critical for smart contract auditors and developers building secure DeFi protocols.

How can developers prevent similar smart contract attacks?

Preventing smart contract hacks requires a combination of secure coding practices, thorough security audits, and understanding common attack vectors like reentrancy, oracle manipulation, and access control flaws. Smart Contract Hacking (SCH) provides hands-on training to help developers and auditors identify and prevent vulnerabilities before deployment.

Reaper Finance Hack

TOTAL LOST $31K

Low Dec 07, 2020 Rugpull ethereum

Affected Chain ethereum Incident surface

Recovered - No recovery reported

All-Time Rank #1820 By amount stolen

Auditors 1 Prior security audit

Incident Overview

The contract deployer minted tokens onto his wallet:

https://etherscan.io/tx/0x0a159a37…1e81f1

Project tokens were distributed between different external wallets in the following transactions:

https://etherscan.io/tx/0x62257b41…111efe

https://etherscan.io/tx/0x0b169173…199b98

https://etherscan.io/tx/0x7a0a0a61…14987c

https://etherscan.io/tx/0x6a8e9df1…b06910

https://etherscan.io/tx/0xd068f9dc…1967c9

https://etherscan.io/tx/0x6312dc74…e8cfde

Second minting invoked by the contract deployer:

https://etherscan.io/tx/0xbb0973ad…37b5e2

Addresses, which received tokens, started to sell them after the initial liquidity was added:

https://etherscan.io/address/0x7b8c48a2…d16575#tokentxns

https://etherscan.io/address/0x34e11efc…9c92f7#tokentxns

https://etherscan.io/address/0xf466c2b2…0c0447#tokentxns

Incident Report

Protocol / Project Reaper Finance

Date of Incident December 07, 2020

Affected Chain(s) ethereum

Attack Technique Rugpull

Classification Yield Aggregator

Primary Source View Post-Mortem

Protocol Information

Protocol Type Lending

Affected Token R3P

Protocol Twitter/X @Leaperfinance

What the Attacker Needed to Succeed

Understanding the prerequisites for this type of attack helps auditors identify protocols that are most at risk and helps developers build better defenses.

Technical Knowledge Deep understanding of rugpull and Solidity and EVM internals

Capital Required Seed capital to cover gas and initial position setup

On-Chain Access Ability to interact with ethereum smart contracts and deploy a custom exploit contract

Protocol Analysis Identification of the exploitable vulnerability in Reaper Finance's contract logic - root cause: yield aggregator

Execution Speed Precise transaction ordering and timing to exploit the vulnerability within a single atomic block

Obfuscation Plan A strategy to launder and move stolen funds - typically through mixers, cross-chain bridges, or decentralized DEX swaps to resist tracing

What Auditors Should Check

Could this have been caught in audit? Hard to catch — private key / OpSec failures are outside smart contract audit scope

Audited by Audit Report 1 — still lost $31K. Prior audits don't guarantee safety, especially after post-audit code changes.

If you're auditing a protocol with similar architecture to Reaper Finance, these are the critical security checks that could have prevented this incident (December 2020).

Verify all logic paths related to Rugpull are guarded by proper access controls and input validation
Review privileged functions (owner, admin, governance) for potential abuse vectors - centralization risks should be documented and bounded with timelocks or multi-sigs

Master these auditing techniques with hands-on labs and real exploit scenarios in the Smart Contract Hacking course.

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Security Audit History

Audit Report 1 Report

Sources & References

01
Source 1 https://twitter.com/CaptainJackAPE/status/1336096356465692672

Threat Assessment

Severity Level

LOW

Attack Vector Rugpull
Root Cause Yield Aggregator
Year 2020

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